But, despite postponement after postponement, MacArthur never wavered in his belief that a sweep by sea around the enemy's flank was the most practical way to end the war. It was a concept MacArthur had used in humbling Japan, and it put United States strength to its best use, while minimizing American weaknesses.
The Joint Strategic Plans and Operations Group, FECOM, had to discard plan after plan during July and August. The 2nd Infantry Division arrived from Fort Lewis, Washington; it had to be committed on the Naktong. The Provisional Marine Brigade—which MacArthur had requested particularly for the amphibious operation—had to be diverted to the peninsula to help save the Eighth Army. Only the 7th Division, already cannibalized by the demands of the understrength committed divisions, remained in Japan as nucleus.
Of a number of plans postulated by the Joint Strategic Plans and Operations Group, MacArthur favored the one labeled 100-B: an amphibious landing at the port of Inch'on, coupled with a breakout from the Pusan Perimeter by Eighth Army. MacArthur chose Inch'on as a landing site because it was the second port of Korea, Intelligence reported it lightly defended, and it was only eighteen miles from Seoul, the nerve center of the Inmun Gun in South Korea.
Seoul in U.N. hands would leave the North Koreans isolated from their bases in the north, and encircled by hostile forces. It was the ancient hammer and anvil concept, and MacArthur felt that a successful operation would result in the complete disintegration of the invaders.
But Inch'on posed enormous difficulties. Between Inch'on and the open sea were expanses of mud flats, crossed by a tortuous channel. The tides at Inch'on were extreme—from 31.2 feet at flood to minus .5 at ebb. Landing craft could approach the harbor only during certain hours of the day. In the middle of September 1950, the Marines would have to land against the sixteen-feet-high seawalls surrounding Inch'on with only two hours of remaining daylight.
By 20 July, however, MacArthur had decided on the Inch'on operation, and neither the outright opposition of the Navy and Marine Corps, nor the Joint Chiefs' lack of enthusiasm—even Army General Collins was dubious—could sway him. Admiral Doyle, who would command the naval forces, told MacArthur, 'The operation is not impossible, but I do not recommend it.'
Marine General Lemuel Shepherd called on MacArthur and tried to argue him into a landing near Osan, below Seoul.
But MacArthur, fighting from behind his five stars and his enormous prestige as America's leading field commander, was adamant. There were better landing sites in other areas, true, but none that could so quickly pinch the vital nerves of the enemy. MacArthur was willing to take risks, provided the campaign could be brought to a rapid close.
In Washington, he received solid support from Secretary of Defense Johnson, who also wanted the war over as quickly as possible.
He moved ahead with planning for Inch'on, and he bombarded the JCS with messages stating his position in highly eloquent terms. On 6 September he confirmed his verbal orders for the operation in writing; 15 September was set as D-Day. When the JCS again asked him for reconsideration, he told them in part:
'There is no question in my mind as to the feasibility of the operation and I regard its chance of success as excellent.'
Finally, in a reply contrasting oddly with MacArthur's long and literate discourses, the JCS allowed him the green light:
'We approve your plan and President has been so informed.'
Meanwhile, the landing forces were being assembled. A new corps HQ, the X, was activated to command them. When Ned Almond suggested that a corps commander should be found, MacArthur smiled and said, 'It is you.'
But Almond was also to retain his other hat as FECOM chief of staff. MacArthur figured that the Korean fighting would come to a speedy close once the enemy were taken in the rear.
Almond took command of X Corps. A blue-eyed, gray-haired man nearing sixty, and a VMI graduate, Almond possessed both a driving energy and a contempt for incompetence at any level. He was both respected and feared throughout FECOM. He drove all men hard, but drove himself as well. He could evoke the thunders if crossed, but he was a man completely loyal to Douglas MacArthur, and one whom MacArthur trusted implicitly.
Around him, Ned Almond gathered a great number of handpicked staff. While many of Walker's staff had been thrown together in Korea under hasty conditions, Almond wished to avoid any obvious pitfalls.
For ground troops X Corps would have the 7th Infantry Division in Japan and the newly assembled and arrived 1st Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force. Both these units had been put together almost from scratch.
Each of the Marine regiments, the 1st and 7th, had been reactivated. Marines had been called from all over the world. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean was stripped of one battalion. Half of the ranks were filled with recalled reservists. While the first-arrived 5th Marines fought in the Naktong Bulge, the 1st and 7th Marines continued to debark in FECOM in bits and pieces.
The 7th Division was in worse shape than even the Marines. As the weakened occupation divisions had been alerted for Korea, they had slowly cannibalized the 7th by drawing on it for fillers. During July, more than 100 officers and 1,500 key N.C.O.'s and men had been taken from the 7th; at half-strength, it was even weaker in cadre positions.
For a number of days of August and September, despite the Eighth Army's shrieks of dismay, the entire infantry and artillery replacement pipeline was channeled into the 7th Division. And at MacArthur's order, Walker shipped 8,000 Koreans over from Pusan as KATUSA for the division. These unfortunates were all civilians, swept up from the streets and refugee camps of Pusan. They poured ashore in Japan bewildered, scared, and sick; many wore only sandals and shorts. Understanding no English, they were herded to American companies and batteries in packets of one hundred, where they were regarded with no high enthusiasm by American commanders.
Only in the quality of its artillerymen and infantry weapons crews did the 7th Division stand out. The Artillery School at Sill, Oklahoma, and the Infantry School at Benning had been stripped of veteran N.C.O.'s to fill these posts.
While the 7th Division gradually swelled to combat strength, the Marines and Eighth Army were having a jurisdictional squabble over Murray's 5th Regiment. Major General Oliver P. Smith, 1st Marine Division CG, wanted the 5th back before Inch'on.
But Walton Walker, pressed for the Provisional Brigade's release, snapped, 'I will not be responsible for the safety of Eighth Army's front if I lose the 5th Marine Regiment!'
The Navy and Marine Corps informed MacArthur that without the return of the regiment they would not participate in the Inch'on landing.
MacArthur said, 'Tell Walker he will have to give up the Marines.'
The Marine Division sailed from Kobe, Japan on the 11th of September. The Army 7th Division embarked at Yokohama the same day, and on the 12th, and 5th Marines departed Pusan for a rendezvous somewhere at sea. Thirty minutes past midnight on 13 September, with MacArthur and party aboard, the command ship
The X U.S. Army Corps, 70,000 men, was at sea. It had been formed from scratch, operating against time, manpower, and every known logistic difficulty, and its very conception embodied the best of American military capability. No other nation in the world had the means and knowledge to put such a force together in so short a time. No other nation would have attempted what MacArthur had planned from the first.
Riding into rough seas from a near typhoon off Kyushu, the convoy steamed toward the most brilliant stroke of the Korean War.
Because the Inch'on landing was so completely successful, and achieved at such light cost, there has been a tendency to discount both the hazards involved and Douglas MacArthur's courage in holding fast to his original plan. Whatever the early American participation in the Korean conflict had been, amphibious assault by X Corps was no small operation. It involved more ships and men than most of the island operations of the Pacific War, and it could be accomplished only because of the skills and knowledge acquired by the Navy and Marine Corps during that war.
The Navy and Marine Corps had never fully accepted the plan; yet they carried it out to perfection. As MacArthur had said, 'The Navy has never turned me down yet, and I know it will not now.' And the first hours and days of Inch'on were strictly a Navy-Marine affair. Until a beachhead was secure on the peninsula, the Army was merely along for the ride.
